Hiking yoga instructor Christiane Crawford leads a group in yoga exercises on June 21, 2014 in San Francisco, CA. Hiking Yoga is a company that hike-yoga sessions out of a few Bay Area locations, providing 18-person, 90-minute hike-yoga interval training sessions. less

Hiking yoga instructor Christiane Crawford leads a group in yoga exercises on June 21, 2014 in San Francisco, CA. Hiking Yoga is a company that hike-yoga sessions out of a few Bay Area locations, providing ... more

Photo: Craig Hudson, The Chronicle

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Hiking yoga participants practice yoga atop Russian Hill on June 21, 2014 in San Francisco, CA. Hiking Yoga is a company that hike-yoga sessions out of a few Bay Area locations, providing 18-person, 90-minute hike-yoga interval training sessions. less

Hiking yoga participants practice yoga atop Russian Hill on June 21, 2014 in San Francisco, CA. Hiking Yoga is a company that hike-yoga sessions out of a few Bay Area locations, providing 18-person, 90-minute ... more

Photo: Craig Hudson, The Chronicle

Hiking Yoga a breath of fresh air for tourists, locals

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On any given Saturday morning, countless Bay Area yogis plant their bare feet on mats and greet the day, working through a ream of yoga poses in the studio mirror. But a few leave their mats at home, lace up their tennis shoes and head to the Ferry Building for a yoga hike.

Hiking Yoga, which started in San Francisco in 2009, is a 90-minute session combining a butt-busting hike with gentle yoga, interval training and sightseeing. It is now offered from coast to coast and its owners have plans to take it abroad.

Founder Eric Kipp said the program takes root in new cities easily and that people find it more fun than being in a studio.

"Laughing and talking and seeing the city - it's much more dynamic," Kipp said.

On a Saturday in mid-June, 17 people, including couples, mother-daughter pairs and groups of friends, met under the clock tower at the end of Market Street to try it out.

"This is completely new to me," said Terry Fung, a native San Franciscan who was trying yoga for only the third time. "I would have never guessed that these two activities would be married together."

That's a typical reaction from many purists - of both hiking and yoga.

But Christiane Crawford, an energetic Mission District native who led the group, said combining the two makes sense. It gets people, including herself, outside to enjoy the city while benefiting from both yoga and hiking.

"Sometimes when it's your hometown, you kind of take things for granted and don't really see the beauty around you. I sort of wanted to reconnect with enjoying my city and the outdoors because I spend a lot of time inside the studio," she said. "The yoga is fairly elemental, in that anyone can do it or modify it, but you know, the hiking part you definitely have to have some cardio fitness there."

On this particular day, Crawford led a mix of first-timers and veterans on a 2.5-mile hike, stopping near Embarcadero Center, by the Vallejo Street steps, and in Ina Coolbrith Park. For about 10 minutes at each station, she ran them through stretches, adjusting poses and offering encouragement.

"It's like a tour and a workout in one," said Donna Proctor, who came with her 22-year-old daughter. "We're getting a good dose of cardio."

Kipp founded Hiking Yoga in San Francisco as a way to combine his passions for yoga and hiking. Taking yoga outside, often into urban environments, where there are distractions, challenges participants' relationship to the discipline, he said.

When he created Hiking Yoga, Kipp was working as a tour guide and a studio yoga instructor. He started as a one-man band with a business plan and a backpack full of cut-up yoga mats, leading twice-a-day yoga hikes from the Ferry Building, two blocks from where he lived.

He told anyone who would listen to come and try it - sometimes nobody did.

"As an entrepreneur, that was my cue. If nobody showed up, I (walked) the couple blocks back home to try to figure out how to get people to come."

The combination of the tech boom, great hiking and yoga culture made San Francisco fertile ground for Kipp's business to take off, he said. Social media turned out to be the winning strategy, as Groupon drew people and Yelp reviews served as digital word-of-mouth. Five years later, Kipp has filled more than 45,000 hiking slots around the U.S.

Within two years of starting the business, both Kipp and his wife, Carina Miguez, who worked at Google, had quit their day jobs to grow the company, train more instructors and take care of their two children.

The business expanded and adapted to communities across the state - in Berkeley, Los Gatos, Woodside, San Diego, Los Angeles - and across the country - to New York, Oregon, Kansas, Texas, Missouri, Arizona and Alaska. Now the couple live in Kansas City, where they are making plans to train instructors in Mexico and Europe.

"I was the little engine that could, making all these baby steps and building that reputation," Kipp said.

Meanwhile, the yoga hikers followed Crawford at a good clip, through winding paths on Russian Hill up to Coit Tower. As they climbed, the chatty group quieted down, and beads of sweat formed on their furrowed brows.

"You can't beat the views - that's the carrot on the end of the stick," said Karen Wong, ascending to Coit Tower for the fourth and final yoga stop.

Crawford, who has been leading these hikes for about three years, said seeing the sights, and showing them to others, is part of the charm of yoga hikes.

For tourists, it's a way to see places off the beaten path, like the gardens on Macondray Lane. For locals, it's an excuse to go to Coit Tower and Grace Cathedral - and get a workout, she said.

At the base of Coit Tower, the crew set up miniature yoga mats that Crawford had brought along. As wind rustled the trees, not even the sirens far below seemed to faze them during their final stretch.

This takes yoga "out of a situation where there's a mirror and you're looking at yourself and other people," Crawford said. "Here, you're enjoying the view."